


Burning Bridges

by The_IPRE



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mind Control, mainly just Caleb and Trent but the others are there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 04:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17594324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_IPRE/pseuds/The_IPRE
Summary: He turned to look at the others and spoke, lips moving in unison with the words his teacher said behind him. “You should not have come here.”AKA I'm very afraid of what might happen when the Mighty Nein try to fight Ikithon





	Burning Bridges

Caleb knew the Mighty Nein shouldn’t have come here.

He had warned them against it, but his threats of certain doom and death didn’t seem to phase them. He had forced back frustrated tears, and the others reassured him with words that rang hollow in light of what he knew. He had thrown up in his room, later, and Nott had told him that she was going to gut the bastard who had done this to him.

When they had gone, strapping on armor and lifting weapons and preparing spells, he had no choice but to follow. He could not let them throw themselves on the blade for him if he was not there to die as well.

Now, they stood in the library that he had spent so many of his school years in, and Trent Ikithon stood before them, two young students at his side. In the brief glance that he had gotten of them, Caleb saw that they had to be a decade younger than himself. They stood tall and proud, slicked back hair and haughty expressions showing that they believed themselves perfect soldiers of the Empire, and of their teacher. Ikithon looked down at the Mighty Nein, eyes narrowing with recognition as he saw Beau and Yasha standing at the front, but he didn’t seem to see Caleb yet.

There was a tightness in his chest, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe. After all these years, all he had seen, all he had done, and some small part of Caleb still wanted the man’s approval. The bigger and louder part wanted to hide, disappear amongst the books and run and hide and change his name and lose his identity and-

“You all really should not have come here,” Ikithon said, and Caleb shrunk even further behind Fjord. He was lurking in the back of the group, and still held out hope that he had not been seen by his former master.

Fjord summoned his falchion, and Caleb’s nausea grew. “Maybe you shouldn’t’ve fuckin’ ruined our friend’s life.” _Verdammt_.

“Your friend?” Ikithon’s voice had that inquisitive tone that had fooled Caleb, early on, the one that told him _it’s okay, I won’t bite, tell me what you did._ Once Caleb had revealed his less than perfect performance, it was the voice that turned on a dime and made him realize that while the man might not bite, he could do a hell of a lot worse.

Hands shaking, he tried to cast a disguise self, cursing himself for not having done this before, _why didn’t he do this before_ , but then a voice cut through his rising terror. “An old student of mine, perhaps?”

Suddenly, there was a mage hand gripping his chin, and Caleb was turned so that he was staring right into Ikithon’s eyes. All senses screaming, he struggled to escape the grasp, but it just tightened as the man gave him a once over.

For a moment, everything was frozen. Caleb shaking, the others looking on with expressions ranging from horror to anger to uncertainty, the dust motes catching in the honeyed afternoon air. Breath caught in his chest and chin caught in his old teacher’s magic, Caleb couldn’t move from where his feet had rooted themselves to the cold stone floor.

The moment was shattered by Beau leaping forward, swinging her staff down towards Ikithon. It was a blow designed to knock him unconscious, but one of the students caught it on their arm and fired a spell right back at her.

Ikithon paid the scuffle no mind, eyes widening a bit as he waved the mage hand away. “Bren?”

Everything inside Caleb shrieked at him to get away, but he was frozen in place under the eyes of his old instructor. Distantly, he could see the others leaping into battle, but he was locked in place by the merciless eyes of a man he had once trusted with the world.

“It has been too long.” There was a curling smile creeping along his face. “Come back to us, and what you have done can be put in the past.” Ikithon extended a hand like a benediction, and a spell wrapped around Caleb’s mind.

“ _Cay-leb!_ ” There was Jester’s yell, lilting and sounding miles away despite the fact that she was barely ten feet from him.

“Hey now.” Caduceus put a hand on his shoulder, trying to push a spell of his own into Caleb to force out the one wielded by Ikithon.

“ _What are you doing to Caleb!_ ” Nott screeched, crossbow loaded and firing shot after shot, and for a moment it felt like she might be the one to save him. She was the first person who called him Caleb, and they had saved each other’s lives more times than he had scars. She had curled up next to him on so many nights, and had done her best to pull him from nightmares. He had hurt her, had used her, but she was still here, fighting to save him.

For a moment, it felt like she might save him, but then.

But then, he heard the voice that had molded him into half a person and then left him to shatter, the voice that had encouraged and torn him down, the voice that had been his touchstone for too many years. “Come back to us, Bren.”

With that, Caleb was gone.

His spine straightened and his heels clicked together. His hands came together in proper casting position, much cleaner than his movements had been in years. With square shoulders and haughty look in his eyes, he fell back into the uniform that he had worn for so long.

He lifted a hand, mirroring Master Ikithon, and pointed at a cluster of the Mighty Nein. Beau stared at him in horror before a slew of scorching rays came down on her and she cursed in pain, swinging her staff and her fists at the student for all she was worth.

He turned to look at the others and spoke, lips moving in unison with the words his teacher said behind him. “You should not have come here.”

The fear in Nott’s eyes, Jester’s eyes, Caduceus’ eyes, registered somewhere deep inside his mind. The voice that resided there was screaming, telling him to _stop_ , _don’t you know that they trust you, they are here because of you-_

The calculated expression he wore pushed that voice down, deep, deep down to rest with the memories of a house going up in flame, the years in an asylum, the time spent gaining the love of his cohorts.

He waved his hand, and a spell was flung off his fingertips.

A fireball exploded in the room, flames leaping from book to book as the library threatened to turn into a bonfire. That hurt this version of himself, the one who had crystals sewed into his skin and killed traitors to his Empire. He had always loved the library.

The blast knocked Fjord back a couple steps, and the witch bolt curling around his blade detonated harmlessly over Master Ikithon’s head. “What the hell, man?” He asked, but Bren had already looked back at his instructor.

Yasha’s sword swung down towards the man, and when it cut into his shoulder he threw up a shield with a grimace. Bren stood, hands prepared to cast but empty of magic. He was simply meant to be a tool, and a tool was not meant to act on its own. Master Ikithon had not told him to wreak vengeance on the barbarian, and so he would not.

(And maybe part of the reason that he did not hurt her was that voice that he had pushed down, the one that was close to these people and didn’t want to see them dead. He didn’t put much thought into it.)

A cat was curled around his neck, and when he ignored its claws digging into his shoulders it jumped to the ground with a yowl. He paid it no mind as it twined around his ankles, getting in the way of his movement and making a fuss, but when it set off his aim on the next spell that he had tried to cast, he felt his instructor’s orders take a heavier hand in his mind again.

The smoke from the burning books was beginning to thicken the air, but Master Ikithon’s eyes still shone bright through the cloud.

Body moving like a marionette under the man’s control, Bren kicked the creature away from himself. It landed next to Nott, and he could see that her hair and her bandages and her hands were all scorched, and the image of his fireball hitting her flashed through his mind again.

Despite this, she still looked so determined, and between firing one bolt and the next, she glanced over at him with wide eyes.

He saw that she was shaking, and somewhere in the back of his mind her yelling began to register.

His hands broke from their casting positions and came up to grasp at his head, as all of the sensations that had been so mercifully quiet came rushing back in. The shouts and grunts and screams of his friends, fighting tooth and nail because of him, was deafening. Frumpkin’s cauterwauling drew his attention next, and if he had been in any more piece of mind he would have snapped the fey out of there because this was no place for a cat.

And the books- oh, the books.

Once again, he was surrounded by burning, and once again, it was his fault.

Crackling filled the air as fire leapt from tome to tome, and this last sanctuary from an old life went up in smoke as his friends fought beside him.

Ikithon looked over with a dismissive curl of his lip, realizing that the spell had lost its hold, but his face smoothed back into the kind teacher _whose expectations really are so reasonable, can’t you just see that I’m doing it for your future, I just want to make the Empire better through you_.

Under that, Caleb could see blood spreading across his robes, and there was a crawling burn up one arm from one of Fjord’s eldritch blasts. He still stood tall, never a man to let such things as bodily harm make him weak, and he stared down his former protege. There was more than a whisper of danger in his face, a look that was prepared to torture and mutilate and kill to get results. His smile had turned sharp as a crystal shard.

“Forsake these traitors to the Empire, Bren, and-”

“I am not Bren.” _Not anymore. You made sure of that_. Caleb’s voice was a snarl, piercing through the sparks and the smoke and the trickery to the heart of the man who had destroyed his life. As he stood there, shaking with terror and fury and pain, all the people who he had been stretched out behind him like afterimages. As he raised his arm with clenched teeth, all those skins he had inhabited and names he had borrowed and lives he had lived lifted their arms alongside.

The Mighty Nein fought with him, and he would not let them down.

Hands shaking, he released the spell burning the tips of his fingers for all he was worth. “My name is Caleb Widogast, and you will not hurt my friends.”

A smug look was quickly devoured by the flames, and every muscle in Caleb’s body was tense with fear and hope and nausea.

This fireball, the biggest that he had ever cast and bright as the sun, hid Ikithon’s body from view for what felt like forever. Caleb wasn’t sure if he was breathing, friends moving in slow motion and licks of flame arcing through the air and the late afternoon sun banished by magic of his own making.

The man’s students were caught in the blaze along with him, and Beau was staggering away from the heat, hand pressed to an injury on her stomach.

Jester was next to Nott, patting her hair and pressing healing into the burns that Caleb had left.

Magic slowed its swirling around Fjord’s sword as he turned to look at Caleb, unsure of what would come next and looking to the wrong place for answers.

Yasha backed away, and Caduceus began preparing to usher the others from the burning room.

All Caleb could do was watch as the flames began to die down. Two charred corpses had already fallen to the ground, and a better man would have felt worse about them getting caught in the crossfire.

As it was, he only had eyes for the solitary standing figure. His arm was still outstretched, but the skin had become blistered and cracked beyond recognition. His teeth were bright, still smiling from their place in the man’s skull. The corpse began to fall forward, breaking through the remains of a burnt desk, and it hit the floor with a sickening _thud_ that rung loud even over the other noises of the room.

Caleb fell with it.

His knees hit the floor and his knuckles brushed the stone, eyes staring sightlessly ahead. Again he was surrounded by fire, again it was his own doing, again he had wrought death, and now here he was, alone.

He was prepared to stay there until the entire building went up in smoke.

Then, arms, supporting his knees and back and pressing him to a chest. There was a comforting rumble as Caduceus spoke. “There now, Mr. Caleb. I think our time has come to get out of here.”

A few halting steps were taken before there was a quiet exchange above him – or was it only quiet because of the muffled ringing in his ears, or because of the crackling of paper that drowned out all other sound? – and he was passed off into different arms. Distantly, he recognized that it was Yasha’s face above him.

As the group picked up pace, his mind remained stuck in the library where he had called home for so many years.

Dead bodies littering the ground. His friend’s blood shed. Years of knowledge, turned into cinders by his own hand. 

His friends, fighting an ill-advised battle and winning. An evil man, gone. A lost name, left to burn in the light of the one he had chosen.

Head heavy, Caleb let himself go lax in Yasha’s arms and trusted the Mighty Nein to make it out alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Flavortext](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flavortext/pseuds/Flavortext) for the beta! Feel free to come yell at me on [tumblr](https://the-ipre.tumblr.com/), or leave a comment or kudos~


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